Dysfunction of neuronal networks and their early oscillations under pathological conditions

Over the last decades, the impaired cognitive performance in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders has emerged as one of the biggest burden for the health systems. In the absence of major structural defects, some of these disorders have been considered as “oscillopathies”, i.e. miswiring disorders as result of abnormal functional communication by oscillatory rhythms between different brain areas. It has been hypothesized that these functional deficits take place already during development. We use animal models of mental disorders, perinatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, and perinatal stress to identify the abnormal maturation of circuits and its disease-related behavioral-readout.